The Internet of Things (IoT)—embedding sensors and actuators into physical objects to link them to the digital world—is quickly becoming the next big thing. According to McKinsey, IoT is poised to be one of the 10 disruptive technologies that will transform the way we live and work; Forrester sees development for wearables beginning to mature in 2017, with ready availability of back-end software and services for enterprises in 2019. HP’s numbers are even more telling: IoT is projected to connect 1 trillion-plus objects in the next decade—up from 9 billion today—with market growth estimated to be $325 billion in 2018. IOT is currently transforming various industries: transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, retail.

A video from last month’s HP Discover in Barcelona explores this physical/digital ecosystem and looks at how integrating contextual computing and cognitive science is fueling the development of connected cars, homes, and Machine to Machine (M2M) interactions in several industry verticals. In “The Internet of Things and wearables: driving the next phase of personal computing,” Sridhar Solur, HP Director of Next Gen Computing and Cloud Services, explains how the characteristics of IoT vary widely from past IT gamer-changers like mobility. “You have a device, but it’s not all about the device,” he says. “The device connects to a hub, and this hub could be your phone, your PC—it also connects at the back-end to the cloud.”